As established in a previous HOG blog post, Coach & Mentor is one of the 12 competencies of Emotional Intelligence. Today, we'll warm up by taking a look at some of the benefits of coaching in the workplace (aka, why you should care).
Effective coaching skills:
- Increase employee satisfaction & fulfillment
- Result in less time being spent engaged in work drama
- Improve employee buy-in
- Increase problem-solving skills
- Improve employee performance
- Improve resiliency and ability to deal with the unknown
“Coaching allows the leader to elicit the strengths and knowledge of the people they are leading. This frees leaders to focus on the big picture, prevents micromanaging, and gives employees the opportunity to prove their competency.” - Joshua Schultz, Psy.D.
If you are in a leadership position, or would like to be, developing your coaching skills is a must.
There are many workplace scenarios that benefit from coaching. One of my favorite topics to coach folks through is their Career Development. When I worked as Director of Training & Development for a mid-sized company, I had the opportunity to coach hundreds of folks on their career.
I know from experience the positive impact Career Development coaching can have not only on the individual being coached, but on the team as a whole. Wouldn't it be cool if every organization offered coaching services as an employee perk? That's definitely a part of my dream world, where people-centric cultures are the norm and work feels better.
In the next HOG blog post, I'll share 11 Career Development Coaching questions you can use to get started. If you're a manager, you can use these questions with your direct reports. If you don't have direct reports, you can use these questions as a powerful self-reflection tool.